Todd, Tim and Kellan Cook love Baseball, the Seattle Mariners and trekking around the country to visit stadiums and watch games. These are their stories. #FatherSonBaseball

Tim’s First Mariners Road Game (8/9/07)

On August 9, 2007, Tim and I headed down to Baltimore for Tim’s first Mariners road game. As best I can recall, I didn’t see the Mariners play in a road game until I was 23, also in Baltimore. Tim bested me by about 20 years on that front.

This was Tim’s third game of his life and it was being played in his third MLB stadium of his life. Not bad.

This would be a cool and memorable game too because (as strange as it sounds) it was Tim’s first game NOT in a luxury suite or, put another way, his first game in the seats.

And here he is checking out his first stadium seat of his life…

…well, actually we’ll see later that this isn’t Tim’s actual seat, but its in the same row. He was checking out how these seat thingys work.

Not only was this Tim’s first game in the seats, it was our first game as a father-son team. At his first game, we had 27 other family members and friends with us in the suite. At his second game, we had 10-15 of my co-workers and their “significant others” with us in the suite. At this game, it would be just me and Tim, and we would prove to be stellar MLB game partners.

This season (2009) is the first time I felt like Tim was old enough and had enough endurance to go to batting practice before a game. Back in 2007 and 2008, we regularly arrived just before game time. While we arrived at this game after BP ended, we did have some time to check out the stadium before the game started.

After checking out our seats in CF, we headed behind the 3B dugout to get a classic Camden Yards picture with the field and warehouse in the background:

Look at how happy that boy is to be at the ballpark with his dad and his Mariners. This is Cook & Son / Mariners baseball!

By the way, do you see that glove Tim is holding? It is a Rawlings RBG36B (circa 1992). I didn’t take that glove to a single game in 2009. It is nothing fancy. But it is my favorite glove. It is the glove I used in the outfield in high school. I formed it perfectly for my hand. It fits my glovehand like an extra layer of skin.

Anyway, back to Camden Yards.

After walking around a bit, we found ourselves in my second favorite spot to get a posed picture at Camden Yards — down the 1B line right where the concourse takes a turn toward RF.

We got a picture with home plate behind us…

..and then pivoted 45 degrees and got one with the warehouse behind us:

It was game time. We headed out to section 90 (straight away CF) and took our seats behind Ichiro (and whoever played CF for the O’s in 2007). Here is Tim in his first ticketed seat (with a little booster seat helping him out):

After a while, Tim had enough of the seats and wanted to walk a bit. We made our way to the standing room flag pavillion in RF. I had never really spent time in the flag pavillion before this game. But starting with this game and continuing until today, the flag pavillion has proven to be Tim’s favorite spot at Camden Yards.

At this game, he was all about puddle stomping in the flag pavillion:

Of course, Tim was only a year and a half old at this point, so he couldn’t run around the whole game. So from time-to-time, he’d take a break in his stroller…

…and as you can see above to the right, he was into the game and cheering for his Mariners.

The Mariners were leading the game early when Tim and I got some nice person to take our picture out on Eutaw Street:

The seats and the Mariners road game weren’t the only firsts of the day. It was also Tim’s first rain delay!

We were out in CF where there is nowhere to take refuge from the rain. So Tim and I ducked into the concourse behind the infield seats. We did some walking around until the rain let up.

When the rain let up, I decided we should go check out the Mariners bullpen. I didn’t realize at the time that there was covered seating for the players in the bullpen. I was wondering whether the relief pitchers would be in there or not. They were.

We headed over to the pen and looked down to see a couple Mariners pitchers milling about. And the above-pictured then-rookie Brandon Morrow was chatting with a somewhat scary groupie-looking lady who was standing in the LCF seats. Brandon somewhat looked “trapped” into talking to this lady. When Morrow saw us standing there wearing our Mariners gear I could tell he started thinking, “here’s my out!” He turned to us and asked if we were from Seattle. Scary groupie-looking lady was out of the Morrow loop.

Morrow and I chatted for a minute or two. Then I asked him if there was any chance Tim could get a baseball. Brandon was more than happy to oblige. He ran back over to the bullpen bench and grabbed a ball out of the baseball bag. He ran back over to us and fired a strike into my glove.

“Thanks, Brandon!”

After the rain stopped, we headed back out to CF. This is what the view looked like from out there:

I think the rain delay was in the fifth inning with the score tied 5-5. Four of the O’s runs came on a grand slam by Miguel Tejada. The grand slam was Tejada’s 250th home run of his career.

After the rain delay, the Mariners piled on some runs and took a 10-5 lead. Tim was excited to walk down every row in the CF seats and touch all of the dripping wet seats:

In the picture above, the red circle shows where we were standing when Brandon Morrow tossed us the baseball during the rain delay.

Right at the end of the game, Tim got really tired. The Mariners were up 11-8 and we trusted them to get the job done in our absence, so we called it a night a bit early.

Tim was cuddling up with his baseball in the car when we found the game on the radio…

…as we made our way through the city to the freeway entrance, the Mariners scored two insurance runs. That was plenty for future Orioles closer, George Sherrill to close the win out for the Mariners.

As the box score shows, it was a great game. Ichiro was 3-6 to bring his average to .350 on the season. He also had 3 RBI and 2 runs scored. Raul Ibanez was 2-4 with 2 RBI. Jose Guillen, then the Mariners right fielder, was 1-3 with a HR and 2 runs scored.

Horacio Ramirez got the win for the Mariners to take his record to 7-3. Interestingly, before this game Ramirez was 6-0 at home and 0-3 on the road. So we saw his first road victory of the season. We also saw one inning by Mariners rookie Ryan Rowland-Smith who is the first player in MLB history with a hyphenated last name, and a darn nice guy.

Aloha Todd/Tim – Its been fun checking in and you sharing additional “off-season” flashback. Great to see the pictures of Tim growing up. Still don’t know how you have time to write these fantastic post – We continue to enjoy your adventures and stories – Would love to see updates on Tim’s progress learning the game of baseball if you run out of things to write about – Todd and Timothy (Teemo).

TEEMO-
Hey, great to hear from you. Its been a while. Hope all is well in Hawaii. Thanks for your comment. Glad you are enjoying the posts on Tim’s old entries. Its fun for me to look back at these games. I’m sure some teaching-Tim-baseball updates will be coming in the future!

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